Bonn, 6 August 2010

UN climate talks in Cancun need to make more progress on the legal status of any new treaty. Luis Alfonso de Alba, Mexico’s special representative for climate change, said while progress has been achieved on some issues at climate talks in Bonn this week, finding common ground on the legal framework of any new treaty had been slower than he had hoped.

“We are not as close as we would like, in terms of targets in a legally binding format. But it’s not the only element of this package,” de Alba told a press conference.

De Alba, who also serves as Mexico's permanent representative to the UN in Geneva, said his country, which will host UN climate talks in Cancun in November, would push countries towards an agreement that would have legal backing.

“If it’s not legally binding, it’s nothing,” de Alba said, referring to a dispute between developed and developing countries on the status of any future climate pact.

Most developing countries want the Kyoto protocol to continue after 2012, but some rich nations, most notably the US and Japan, want the 1997 pact replaced by a wider agreement that would oblige large developing economies to enact national climate plans.

Rich countries want the plans adopted by emerging economies to be subject to international scrutiny.

Bottom-up

The US does not want to be bound to the same legal structure applied under the Kyoto protocol, a treaty it never ratified.

It prefers a bottom-up approach known in climate policy jargon as pledge-and-review, whereby national actions to cut emissions are scrutinised through an international system of monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV).

The EU also favours a wider treaty than Kyoto, but wants a legally-binding pact and is prepared to accept a second commitment period for the 1997 treaty as part of an agreement where new and old treaties would run in parallel.

Countries at the Bonn meeting are discussing the legal status of the Kyoto protocol in the potential absence of a climate treaty taking effect from the start of 2013, the year the current commitment period of the Kyoto protocol expires.

Filling the gap

The European commission said in a side meeting in Bonn today that the Kyoto protocol’s institutions, such as those that administer the clean development mechanism ( CDM), could continue after 2012 even if a gap opens up.

But some developing countries, mindful of the role that CDM credits play as offsets in the EU emissions trading scheme, raised doubts that the mechanism could continue even if a future commitment period doesn’t take force at the start of 2013

The chair of the meeting on legal matters relating to the Kyoto protocol is expected tomorrow to publish a summary of this week’s discussions and further recommendations.

The EC’s lead negotiator, Artur Runge-Metzger, said last week that the EU could set up structures to register CDM projects and issue credits from 2013 in the theoretical event that UN institutions were to crumble in the wake of a gap between commitment periods.

Ends --

By John McGarrity, Point Carbon Thomson Reuters.

www.pointcarbon.com